Project Summary

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The Yakima Basin Environmental Education Program (YBEEP) offers teachers from throughout the Yakima Basin the opportunity to become involved, along with their students, in hands-on, multi-disciplinary, relevant learning, as well as field projects and outdoor labs. The learning and field projects address a broad range of biology, natural resources, ecosystems, and environmental science, including anadromous and resident fish, water resources conservation and management, wildlife, forest management, habitat restoration, native vegetation, wetlands, anatomy and physiology, and geology.

This is a popular long-standing project with apparently good community buy-in. In-kind confirmed cost-share exceeds the BPA requested budget. There is a definite need for salmon-focused environmental education such as this in the Columbia Basin and other places in the Pacific Northwest that effect the Basin. The narrative states the biological objective "to help educate the public concerning fish and wildlife restoration, the importance of fish and wildlife to various segments of society, basic ecological process, and related subjects." The proposal would be improved by including more clearly defined measures of "helping educate" and provision of a perspective on how other educational processes in other places are contributing (e.g., a class in Seattle that learns about pollutants carried across the Cascades into the Yakima system). The project's website was well done and an asset to the program.

The surveys of teacher satisfaction provide one measure of effectiveness. Other evidence of project effectiveness should be developed and reported. It appears from previous ISRP reviews that the question of measuring effectiveness was raised earlier. The current proposal does not show a resolution of the problem and does not advance alternative approaches to performance measures. According to the proponent's narrative, the net result (of this project) is improved understanding of fish and wildlife restoration and management in the Yakima Basin. Measures to assess if this statement is correct or not need to be incorporated in the proposal. Numbers of teachers trained, student visitations, etc. alone are not sufficient.

Future proposals would be improved if they include a more systematic approach and documentation of what works and what doesn't. This was also an earlier ISRP comment.